


Ugly Truth

by Calacious



Series: Mirrors [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 02:57:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14346546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Calacious
Summary: Sometimes the truth is ugly.





	Ugly Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Another ficlet as I try to wrap my brain around a writing project that I'm attempting. Hopefully it will start coming together soon, and hopefully no one minds this little diversion that my brain has decided upon.

_Ugly._

A word Steve would scoff at and deny if Danny dared utter it aloud. He keeps it in his head, where it’s safe. A secret between himself and the image staring back at him from the mirror.

Blinking does nothing to make the word disappear, to rid him of the stranger staring back at him through bloodshot eyes.

He hasn’t had a full night of sleep in days. Weeks. Months.

Maybe it’s been years.

Was he an insomniac before his memories fled?

He doesn’t know.

Will never know, no matter how much Steve — the others that Danny dare not think about now — wants it to be otherwise.

The truth is ugly. It’s never pretty. Never what you want it to be. It’s hard and rough around the edges and it doesn’t lie. It’s what Danny can’t face, other than the ugly truth of what is staring back at him from the mirror. A ghost of a man that he’s heard about, has adopted as his own, but can’t really understand because he can’t work his way past the surface. Past what the mirror image reflects back to him through Steve, Grace, Charlie...

There are times when he thinks that maybe Steve’s got it all wrong. That he’s not the Danny that Steve lost and then found, but a clone.

He remembers hearing about cloning on some late night news channel that had been running when he couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to wake Steve. The ramifications of playing god are astounding.

Or maybe he’s Frankenstein’s monster, cobbled together from pieces of this ‘Danny’s’ life, made to fit together as Steve and the others believe he should.

He’s got the scars to go along with that theory.

A fresh nightmare to pull him from sleep, the safety of Steve’s arms.

Grace had shared the story of Frankenstein with him not too long ago. They’d watched the movie. Reading makes his head explode in pain the color of white and blue fireworks. Makes his stomach rebel, and his palms sweaty, and his chest feel like it’s filled with wet cement.

He tried to read a book to Charlie once, shortly after he’d stopped fighting Steve and his interpretation of what the mirror was showing him. It hadn’t gone so well. He’d lost time in the white light and splitting headache and had wound up deep inside the tunnel on the other side of the mirror.

_Smoke._

_Pain._

_Blood._

_Ugly, seeping wounds, thick with puss._

_A word that brought pain and another that brought peace._

“Danny?” Steve’s voice pulls him out of the tunnel before he can return there at the memory (he’s making new ones every day) of what reading with Charlie had done to him, where it had taken him (back to where the memories were lost), how it had left him a little more broken and small.

“Come.” Steve holds a hand out to him.

Danny reaches for the mirror image of it, and stops abruptly before his hand can touch the smooth surface of the mirror, turns to grasp the hand of flesh. A hand that wields comfort rather than pain. A hand he can trust more than the mirror.

Reluctant to leave, Danny turns from the mirror and follows Steve with steps that falter.

“Stay with me,” Steve says in a voice that is soft, yet commanding. “Don’t go back there. Not today.”

“Okay,” Danny whispers a promise that he doesn’t know if he can keep. One thing that’s been constant and true throughout all of this ugliness is Steve’s steady, calming presence.

He doesn’t know of a day, since he’s been found, that he hasn’t returned _there_ , to that dark place in his mind that exists beyond the mirror. The place where there is no Steve, no Grace, no Charlie, no Danny, only pain and ugliness so deep that it’s hell, pure and simple. But, he’s going to try, because Steve rarely asks him for anything, and there are dark circles under Steve’s eyes that hadn’t been there last week, and Danny wonders when the last time that Steve had gotten a good night’s sleep was.

Steve sighs, and offers Danny a smile that does not reach his eyes. He leads Danny downstairs, to a place without mirrors, save for the reflective surfaces of tables, a TV without moving pictures, spoons, forks, knives, counter-tops, the floor after the cleaning lady has come for the week, the windows when it’s pitch dark outside and the only light is that which threatens to swallow him whole.

Danny knows mirrors better than he knows himself. Knows the ugliness they contain — the darkness within their mockery of reflection. They’re safe, even if all they do is reflect back to him the ugly truth: that he is not Danny, though he’s doing his best to try to be the man that everyone else remembers. Hopefully, one day, that will be enough.


End file.
